Last week, seniors were informed–largely through rumor–that their teachers would not be allowed to sit on the stage with them during their graduation ceremony. The seniors in GCAA student media are upset and disappointed at this turn of events. We feel that our teachers, who have guided and helped us through our journey through high school, have earned the right to be on the stage with us as we take the next step in our lives.

Administration has informed the senior class that the reason teachers cannot sit on stage is because there isn’t enough room. However, teachers have participated in the graduation ceremony for the past two graduating classes on a voluntary basis, and there have never been over 20 teachers on the graduation stage. Statistically, the most teachers who would attend graduation this year would be 25, and even that number’s unlikely.

“It’s embarrassing, honestly,” senior and GCAAtoday editor-in-chief Tessa Wild said. “Our teachers should be on stage with us…we wouldn’t even be graduating without them. They’re just as important here as we are.”

Rather than having our teachers, who have guided us, taught us, watched us grow, and known most of us for four years or more, sitting on the stage with us as we graduate, they will be confined to the last two rows of the theater, on a first-come first-serve basis. Forcing our teachers to show up early to even attend graduation, and then have to sit in the back of the theater, is an embarrassing degradation and unappreciative, heedless snub of everything our teachers have done. Without them, the senior class would not be graduating.

So, from the seniors of GCAAtoday to our teachers–you have been there for us constantly, taught us unconditionally, and have helped to guide each and every one of our lives to that graduation stage. It was a careless and cruel decision that confined you to the back of the theater. But every one of you will be up there on stage with us. Your guidance, knowledge, and, above all, lessons, will be with us forever.